As I was compiling and typing up my new wisdom for the week, the picture above was the view in front of me.

• When you learn something in the presence of someone else who asks if it will be in your next blog post, it may be a good idea to actually include it. So a carryover from last week was how much more I learned about the Chicago Pedway, a series of tunnels that connect buildings in the Loop, and ways of accessing them that aren’t all that clear.
• After calculating what I thought was the percentage increase of traffic to a Web app, and getting a value that looked completely wrong, I learned the proper way to calculate percentage of increase.
• A “regular” yoga class goes at a much faster pace than an introductory course. And I am happy with that.
• Has the selfie jumped the shark? After it was uncovered that David “Big Papi” Ortiz of the World Champion Boston Red Sox is a paid social media ambassador for mobile behemoth Samsung, and they were accused of staging the selfie Ortiz took with President Obama at the White House earlier this week, I couldn’t help but laugh. Granted I am a huge fan of Papi and the Sox, and thought of the irony of when Obama took a selfie at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service. If you read the linked article here, it is from the Boston Globe, who is now owned by the majority owner of the Sox. Talk about a win-win situation.
• I finally had a hamburger at Chicago’s Rockit Bar and Grill, who is famous for their burgers. I got the Locavore burger cooked medium rare, and it actually came medium rare. I usually get burgers medium rare as I like them medium and most places overcook them. Now that I have been to the summit, I now have to return.
• I got an email from Apple about in-app purchases made by kids on iPhones and iPads without their parents’ knowledge, and it also mentioned parental controls available in the operating system iOS. For someone as technical as I am, and knowing many people who use and love the iPhone are not, these are not exactly intuitive. One thing missing is locking out the kids from use as exists with Windows for the Surface tablets.
• I got a postcard from a local Chicago university conducting a study on kids and sleep, and it asked for kids to participate who did not sleep much or showed signs of “fatigue (feeling tired a lot).” I was surprised they needed to define what fatigue means, then again as they are researchers, I am sure it was included based on empirical experience.
• The only video I saw this week that wasn’t work related was a sad story. It was a human interest news story of a Dad dying of cancer who walked his 11-year old daughter down the ‘aisle’ as most likely he wouldn’t live long enough to do it when she got married. The video is embedded below or you can watch it on the link above, and be forewarned, it will make you cry.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Business • Diversions • Mobile Technology • Social Media • Strategize • What I Learned • (0) Comments • Permalink

This past week was the first time that I learned something new in the presence of someone and they asked me if it would make my next blog post of what I learned. Sometimes it’s nice when the real world collides with the virtual world.

• A colleague from India gave me the box pictured above. It could be used as a pencil holder or a even a phone cradle, but I plan on putting nothing into it and admiring it for its own beauty. Thanks Sanam!
• Earlier this week the conductor a Chicago Transit Authority Blue Line subway train fell asleep at the controls as it pulled into the O’Hare Airport stop and the train plowed past the end of the recessed track and went up the stairs of the station. Yet the media calls it a derailment. Watch the video of the accident in the link to the article, or view (and save!) the animated GIF of it and determine for yourself if it is merely a derailment.
• After finally completing 4 consecutive weeks of Intro to Yoga classes at Tejas Yoga, I feel I have learned enough to take on the “foundation” level of yoga classes. Thanks to my instructor Zach for leading me on the start of my yoga journey. Namaste.
• After less than a week owning the Frozen DVD, it has already been used as a disciplinary consequence for poor behavior exhibited by my little ones. The soundtrack to the movie was also bundled with this. Early indicators have shown it to be reasonably successful.
• Tickets for Lollapalooza went on sale this week, but I decided to pass on it and am planning to attend Riot Fest instead.
• A couple of weeks and a couple of updates later, the Starbucks mobile app is still offering what I consider an awkward user experience for its much-touted tipping feature. Rather than setting an automatic amount to tip after a purchase, or make it work much seamless, several seconds after you have your app scanned, you are prompted to add a tip to the purchase. This several seconds seems like an eternity and, as has happened with me a couple of times already, I have already put my phone away by that point and did not tip my barista. Plus the “shake to pay” feature doesn’t seem to bring up my barcode to scan every time. I hope these will be fixed soon.
• I have been noodling on something I am calling “cultural experience,” or CX, when it comes to technology and not only the experience of using it, but how the use of it is influenced by the culture of the community and vice versa. Chances are I am not the only one thinking about this, and there may be others out there thinking and writing on it, and I need to start putting some of this down in Word and go somewhere with it.
• My thougths go out to my fellow NFL AFC East brethren in western New York, as this has been a rough week for Buffalo Bills fans. First, original owner Ralph Wilson passed away. Wilson was adamant at keeping the team in the Buffalo area, and the team is contractually tied to its stadium, named after Wilson, for at least the next decade. It was also announced that former quarterback and NFL Hall of Famer Jim Kelly was supposed to undergo surgery for oral cancer, then it was decided to treat it rather than operate. Kelly was a phenominal athlete, and I have vivid memories of seeing him kick the Patriots’ butt up and down the field for years. In later years he was a businessman and philanthropist, and has achieved probably as much off the field as well.
• I learned how to articulate the difference between writing and editing, as I taught it to my 5-year old as she has been working on writing her first book. In Kindergarten.
• In the course of researching the service Visual.ly I was looking at examples of the creative videos and infographics they have produced and found this great video example of 29 Ways to Stay Creative. I have embedded the video below or you can follow the previous link to watch it in a browser. My favorite way is the very last one – it is worth the less than 2 minutes to watch this.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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So I got me a dotUNO domain name. And some of you, reading that sentence, are probably wondering what I am talking about. I mentioned in a previous post I was going to be writing about generic top-level domain names – and I will – but in the meantime I felt it more important to talk about this new addition to my digital identity.

The domain name is maddaloni.uno.

The .UNO domain name extension, commonly referred to as a generic top-level domain or gTLD, was just recently released as part of a mass expansion of extensions to join the likes of .COM, .N ET, .ORG and others. As the word “uno” means “one” in Spanish, Italian and other languages, it is targeted towards to businesses and entities – including individuals – to use for a unique domain name for their presence and branding on the Internet targeting those who speak those languages.

So why did I register maddaloni.uno? The reasons are many, and I’ll start with the base which are more qualifying for the gTLD.

• I am a second-generation Italian-American and my ancestry is 100% Italian
• My surname, Maddaloni, is Italian
• I have had these qualities for all of my life, which has at least gone for 40 years.
• My wife and children also have this same surname, carrying it along for another generation
• I do know some Italian, and especially know when I am being insulted in Italian

Though I did not have to apply or provide these qualifications, I am proud to present them here. Where all of this is well and good, what am I going to do with the domain name you may ask? Where I am still developing the high-level and detailed personal branding plan, in general I will be using it for identifying me on the Web. As an interim step, I am pointing the domain name to this very blog.

Size Matters

There are many gTLDs on the marketplace today, and this list from Name.com shows many of the gTLDs. If you look at this list, you will see extensions of varying sizes. What I like about .UNO is that it is short – only 3 letters – and easy to spell. As .UNO will be competing primarily with the “Big 3” of .COM, .NET and .ORG primarily, it is unique enough and should not bring confusion like, for example, a .CO domain name (known as a country-code TLD or ccTLD as it is for Columbia) as many may add an “M” to a .CO.

This is not to say that nobody will register or use a longer domain name, but many have been out there for years, like .MUSEUM, .AERO and .JOBS. How many of these have you ever seen or typed? I have probably seen 3 or 4 uses of a .JOBS domain name – one that comes to mind is hyatt.jobs for the eponymous hotel chain. In general I am bearish on the widespread usage of some of the longer gTLDs, but only time will tell how successful they will be.

Congrats on the Launch of .UNO

With the launch of .UNO I am proud to say congratulations to Shaul Jolles, the CEO of Dot Latin, LLC, the company behind .UNO. He is also the co-founder and co-owner of OfficePort, the facility that I worked from for many years and continue to use as my workspace away from home. His hard work and leadership has paid off in his firm being awarded the opportunity to launch .UNO, and though I registered the domain name like everyone else, I am thrilled for his success. #FFL

Capise?

Does .UNO or what I talked about here make sense to you? Do you think maddaloni.uno will be unique and successful as part of my personal brand on the Internet? I welcome your thoughts and questions in the comments to this post.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Back in February I talked about an online course I was taking on “unprocrastination” and one of the exercises was to create a new habit and stick with it for a month. The habit I chose was to come up with a potential blog topic for The Hot Iron every day for the month. If I thought of more than one in a day, then I would log them as well, but as an extra, not for the next day.

Now that we are at the end of March, you may be able to guess how well the course was for me overall! But I did stick to the habit, and as shown in the accompanying photo, I did log the topics. I was tweeting them with the hashtag #28d28bt but I found I was not able to find them all when I did a search on the hashtag – not sure why, so I curtailed the tweeting after a few days.

A List Of Ideas

At the end of February I had a list of 35 potential blog topics, or ideas. And they are just that – ideas. It will not be until I write a topic around it that it becomes a tangible blog post.

This is why I have chosen to share them here. Even if someone else takes the idea, they wouldn’t write the same thing as me. And I have to be honest, not everything I have written about has been a purely unique idea, though they have expressed my point of view which is certainly unique.

Here’s the list by day, and concluded with 7 extra ones.

1. What is a gTLD and Why Should You Care?
2. GiveBackBox Makes Donating Excess Easy
3. Fever is my #RSS Reader of Choice and Here’s Why
4. Nothing is Forever
5. CentUp Offers Unique Profit Model For Bloggers
6. OwnCloud Gives You Control Of Your Data With Style
7. Rivet News Radio Offers Local News By Mobile App
8. Odiogo Still Reads The Hot Iron To You
9. My File Backup Strategy
10. The Project I Didn’t Politically Work On
11. Being Removed From It All And Thrown Back In
12. We Spend Most Of Our Time Around Our Work
13. How The Web Once Gave Me An Attitude Adjustment At Atlanta Airport
14. Few Apps Leverage Promotional Opportunity With App Store Update Description
15. High Demand For Winter Indoor Kids Play In Chicago
16. Phone.com Is My Home Phone Service And More
17. Why Don’t You Carry Business Cards?
18. Everything I Learned About Management and Leadership I Learned Working In College Radio
19. Hailo Taxi App Gets Me Around With No Worries
20. 2 Things To Consider Before You Start Blogging
21. Do We Need Better Stock Photos Of People Or None At All?
22. Discover Offers App-Based Card Freeze For Better Security
23. My College Internship Experience And Why I Don’t Care I Didn’t Get Paid For It
24. Results of 28 Days 28 Blog Posts #28d28bt
25. When The App Doesn’t Do It All For Complete Customer Experience
26. Don’t Get Used To A Desk
27. Procrastination And The Course On It I Am Catching Up On
28. Have You Googled Yourself Lately?

Over the course of the month, I came up with 7 additional ideas.

1. Cardmunch App Working Again And I Am Cautious On Its Use
2. Dryv Dry Cleaning And Laundry Delivery Service Is What I’ve Needed
3. When Is The Last Time You Exported Your Connections From LinkedIn?
4. 5 Blog Post Topics from 2007 That Still Matter Today
5. 3 Things Microsoft’s New CEO Must Do To Win With Mobile
6. My Next Daily Activity Of One Task A Day for March #31d31t
7. Build Web Content Management Systems Since 1997

Off To The Races – Both Sprints and Marathons

Looking back at the list, I feel I have a good set of ideas to work from not only in the near term but over the course of the year. Some of the ideas I have already used, and regular readers of The Hot Iron may recognize them. This is not to say this is all I will write about, but if I am every short for inspiration or simply want to use something good I already thought of, I will refer to this blog post. I like it so much I may do it next February as well, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

I welcome not only your thoughts and comments on this endeavor, but on the ideas I came up with and if you are interested in me writing on something. Don’t be shy – really.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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As taken down on a piece of paper from my daughter’s bedazzled notepad...

• Now that the temperatures in Chicago actually reached above the freezing mark for a “significant” period of time (2 days) and some of the snow has melted, I have noticed a by-product of the frigid temperatures – frost heaves. Very few sidewalks have not been affected by it, and there are many uneven paths around the city. This is on top of the potholed-ridden streets. My guess is these sidewalks will either not be properly fixed or will just be ground down to make then somewhat even.
• My friends at the amazing design studio Visible Logic are conducting a Web Design Survey. It is open to anyone, and I am sure they would love to hear from people who are not in the Web design and development business, and that means you! You can take their survey here; it is short, to the point, and if you give them your email they will send you the results of the survey. While you are on their site check out the great work they have done for their clients.
• Your idea, no matter how well thought-out and articulated, always sounds better when it is said by someone more senior than you, and is sold as their idea.
• I heard about something called the 5 Love Languages where ideally each person in a relationship takes the survey and compares what they want and how they say it. It’s free and doesn’t take long to complete.
• The idea of the media “spoiler”, though it is annoying when you hear of something you haven’t watched yet, is an increasing reality that we will have to deal with. Unfortunately I have seen details of the second season of House of Cards on Twitter and results of Olympics competitions on screens in building elevators before they were broadcast in the US. With more and more real-time information abound and distributed media channels, this will only increase, and we will have to come up with ways to manage it.
• This week I had a flashback to the time I designed a QA lab for a company I worked for years ago. It was a very comprehensive lab consisting of computers and operating system versions to cover all of our customers realistic scenarios. I also remembered the pushback I received from some of my colleagues, which was later taken back as the lab helped troubleshoot and prevent many errors. It was only a flashback, and unfortunately not a déjà vu moment.
• It’s been a while since I have been out at a tech networking event, and thanks to the people at Tech in Motion for hosting a great event in Chicago this past week. I met some great people including the entire team behind Dryv.
• I need to get out and see friends more often. By accident this week I found out my friend Elliott Bambrough is not the full-time co-host of the TV show Chicago’s Best on WGN-TV. Elliott is not only extremely talented but a great person as well. You can see him in action in this segment from a recent episode of Chicago’s Best and I have also embedded it below.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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